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FTX’s ownership of a U.S. bank raises questions

nytimes.com

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Re: FTX’s ownership of a U.S. bank raises questions

#201

Post by williamcotton »

graeme wrote: post #199
williamcotton wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alameda was proven to be a fraud? By whom? Is there a chance they broke fiduciary duties and let themselves get wildly over leveraged, even criminally so, but that they had legitimate aspects of their business? How would anyone know that at this point? Most of the commentary seems to be more conspiratorial (and certainly more fun) than anything. I mean, Enron was pretty cut and dry. Dog and pony show, cook the books…

They represented themselves as a crypto exchange where you traded cryptos with other users. In actuality they took all the cryptos away and lost them. So all of the "trades" happening for at the least many months were not real trades, as there were no actual assets trading hands. That's a bucket shop, a version of financial fraud. This....is not that complicated. So, the question then is: do you trust a bucket shop t…

Ok, so first off, that first link that you posted was to a website called Protos. Oh, I did this by hand, so I might have miscounted, but I'll write up some software and start documenting the graph of all of these allegations on the plane tomorrow... The article contained 23 links. 13 of those links were to other articles on Protos. Of the remaining 10, the only primary sources I could find were:

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/alameda-research

https://markets.ft.com/data/funds/tearsheet/summary?s=MT7000...

https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/nodes/55087847

And then a broken link to something on https://eservices.mas.gov.sg

I can't seem to piece together the same narrative as you have from these primary sources.

Maybe there are more primary sources in those links. As soon as I enlist a computer to do this work for me I'll know.

I was not aware that FTX was a bucket shop, ie, never delivered any of the traded assets and was just pure gambling. Do you have a primary source on this?

The allegations that FTX were engaging in fraudulent accounting practices seems pretty strong at this point. The allegations that FTX were misusing customer's commodities seems pretty strong at this point.

The allegations that involve a complex web of many different characters acting as co-conspirators all seem pretty weak at this point.

The better question is: do you trust a complex web of secondary source material?

Re: FTX’s ownership of a U.S. bank raises questions

#202

Post by graeme »

williamcotton wrote: post #201
graeme wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They represented themselves as a crypto exchange where you traded cryptos with other users. In actuality they took all the cryptos away and lost them. So all of the "trades" happening for at the least many months were not real trades, as there were no actual assets trading hands. That's a bucket shop, a version of financial fraud. This....is not that complicated. So, the question then is: do you trust a bucket shop t…

Ok, so first off, that first link that you posted was to a website called Protos. Oh, I did this by hand, so I might have miscounted, but I'll write up some software and start documenting the graph of all of these allegations on the plane tomorrow... The article contained 23 links. 13 of those links were to other articles on Protos. Of the remaining 10, the only primary sources I could find were: https://www.crunchba…

Protos is a news agency. The primary source of their report is the blockchain. You're free to replicate their work or try to falsify it by pulling the same transactions they did and verifying their work. To date, no one has disputed what they published, including Tether and Alamedia/FTX.

A bucket shop is a place that says it is executing trades but is not, in fact, executing trades and is instead trading in phony assets. FTX did not have the assets on hand, as it had given them to Alameda. This is the definition of a bucket shop.

The source is FTX, they said they had given away their customer funds and didn't have them. What more do you want?

Re: FTX’s ownership of a U.S. bank raises questions

#203

Post by williamcotton »

graeme wrote: post #202
williamcotton wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so first off, that first link that you posted was to a website called Protos. Oh, I did this by hand, so I might have miscounted, but I'll write up some software and start documenting the graph of all of these allegations on the plane tomorrow... The article contained 23 links. 13 of those links were to other articles on Protos. Of the remaining 10, the only primary sources I could find were: https://www.crunchba…

Protos is a news agency. The primary source of their report is the blockchain. You're free to replicate their work or try to falsify it by pulling the same transactions they did and verifying their work. To date, no one has disputed what they published, including Tether and Alamedia/FTX. A bucket shop is a place that says it is executing trades but is not, in fact, executing trades and is instead trading in phony ass…

Do they have a link to their methods used in their report or a link to all of the transactions or other data used to generate their charts? Am I wrong to expect the same rigor that a court or an academic publication would apply?

What FTX has said is basically "we used customer's commodities like a bank would. we lent them out to a trading firm that we also operate and we really hoped that we'd cover these trades". This is fundamentally no different than how banks operate but with a key difference: They didn't seem to make this known to any parties and they seemed to be massively over-leveraged. I have no problem with these activities being illegal. This is not the same thing as a bucket shop.

And I still don't know what any of this has to do with $36 billion worth of Tether, Deltec, Chalopin, Bitfinex, Geniome, Moonstone... and that's just the threads mentioned in this brief discourse we've been having! Every time I ask questions the plot thickens!

So what more do I want? I want sobriety. I want people to ask themselves why they are interested in this story. I want to people to ask themselves why they are writing articles, tweeting, making YouTube videos and posting comments about this story. I want to see primary source material and I want intellectual rigor. I want to see justice served and that is founded on notions of individuals being innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. I want to see no gossip, no speculation, no mentions of how things are convenient, no things appearing a certain way.

Re: FTX’s ownership of a U.S. bank raises questions

#204

Post by erik_seaberg »

bandyaboot wrote: post #198
erik_seaberg wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of organization should citizens be allowed to create to promote a political position, if not a corporation?

The non-profit kind for starters.

Citizens United is a 501(c)4 nonprofit corporation. I think a lot of Super PACs are, but it doesn't seem to alleviate anyone's concerns.

Re: FTX’s ownership of a U.S. bank raises questions

#205

Post by erik_seaberg »

ben_w wrote: post #179
erik_seaberg wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of organization should citizens be allowed to create to promote a political position, if not a corporation?

A political party, surely. (Also, despite that I am not much of a fan of the UK political system, I do like that it has extremely low limits on election spending).

A new political party would itself be a corporation (because if not, who owns its assets?) Running single-issue minor party candidates is also useless unless your issue is important enough to convince a majority of voters to abandon one of the big two parties that have run everything for our lifetimes.

Re: FTX’s ownership of a U.S. bank raises questions

#206

Post by graeme »

williamcotton wrote: post #203
graeme wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protos is a news agency. The primary source of their report is the blockchain. You're free to replicate their work or try to falsify it by pulling the same transactions they did and verifying their work. To date, no one has disputed what they published, including Tether and Alamedia/FTX. A bucket shop is a place that says it is executing trades but is not, in fact, executing trades and is instead trading in phony ass…

Do they have a link to their methods used in their report or a link to all of the transactions or other data used to generate their charts? Am I wrong to expect the same rigor that a court or an academic publication would apply? What FTX has said is basically "we used customer's commodities like a bank would. we lent them out to a trading firm that we also operate and we really hoped that we'd cover these trades". Th…

They detailed their methods in greater detail here: https://protos.com/faq-tether-usdt-investigation/

This isn't a criminal proceeding. But no one has rebutted Protos despite ample opportunity. And Tether specifically cited FTX as a major customer on multiple occasions. It's hardly a radical claim.

> ""we used customer's commodities like a bank would. we lent them out to a trading firm that we also operate and we really hoped that we'd cover these trades".

FTX wasn't a bank, it was a brokerage. Brokerages do not lend out customer funds in this manner! In a regulated brokerage, the customer owns the securities traded. If the brokerage goes bust, they have the claim to them.

Re: FTX’s ownership of a U.S. bank raises questions

#207

Post by williamcotton »

graeme wrote: post #206
williamcotton wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they have a link to their methods used in their report or a link to all of the transactions or other data used to generate their charts? Am I wrong to expect the same rigor that a court or an academic publication would apply? What FTX has said is basically "we used customer's commodities like a bank would. we lent them out to a trading firm that we also operate and we really hoped that we'd cover these trades". Th…

They detailed their methods in greater detail here: https://protos.com/faq-tether-usdt-investigation/ This isn't a criminal proceeding. But no one has rebutted Protos despite ample opportunity. And Tether specifically cited FTX as a major customer on multiple occasions. It's hardly a radical claim. > ""we used customer's commodities like a bank would. we lent them out to a trading firm that we also operate and we rea…

I know that FTX wasn't a bank. I was just loosely summarizing their remarks. I also know that this is not a good thing to be doing. What I don't know is what else they were doing. And neither do you. I'm sure that when this goes to trial that this will all be sorted out.

I know it isn't a criminal proceeding but to me that isn't an excuse for a lack of rigor in any discussion. Why not the Kardashians if we want to have a little fun trash talking strangers online?

I'm actually not very interested in the "Protos Papers" because I still have no idea what that has to do with FTX misusing customer commodities! If it is being used to speculate that they were pumping and dumping other coins or some other fraudulent behavior I am still not interested. Why? Because it is speculation! The courts will figure it out! Why are there so many people "doing research" like it's QAnon or something?

I'll get to the meat of it: I see the current media ecosystem as being a conspiracy theory generating machine and as every day goes by more people that I interact with are finding some kind of rabbit hole to get lost in, speaking of things as objective facts when they have never left their living rooms and their only source of information is an array of pixels sitting on their lap or held in the palm of their hands.

Re: FTX’s ownership of a U.S. bank raises questions

#208

Post by whaleofatw2022 »

brookst wrote: post #185
MichaelCollins wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saying Bankman-Fried has hurt a few orders of magnitude more people than Alex Jones, and allowing him to give interviews and flippantly defend himself is going to cause a lot of emotional trauma.

I think some people have different feelings about their murdered children than they do about stolen money. YMMV.

This is where we get into dark, murky questions.

Is 1 murdered person better or worse than the long term impact of two or even one person becoming destitute enough that their movements have long term impact on another?

Re: FTX’s ownership of a U.S. bank raises questions

#209

Post by hoc »

bombcar wrote: post #119
helsontaveras18 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was another amazing exposé of Tether a few months ago all about this. I can’t remember if it was on Bloomberg, but that Inspector Gadget bit stuck out to me too.

Gogo gadget bankfraud!

Nice. I can see that net of subsidiaries expand and roll out.

Re: FTX’s ownership of a U.S. bank raises questions

#210

Post by watwut »

stickfigure wrote: post #188
watwut wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not letting me speak. They are not letting average fraudster waiting for court day to speak. Given that, yes, they should be able to not let speak whoever. They are selecting very few people to speak and rejecting huge amounts of other people. But the other real thing is how you introduce the speaker. What do you say about the speaker in your materials, whether you promote him as trustworthy or not.

> They are not letting me speak. Please don't take this personally, but I generally have no interest in watching random people speak. They know their audience. On the other hand, if they could secure an interview with Adolf Hitler himself, I would watch. Interest does not mean endorsement.

> Interest does not mean endorsement.

That does depend on how you introduce him and what questions you ask. It does matter on whether when he says lies about Jews for example in that interview, you let them stand unopposed. If you use positive or euphemisms ridden introduction, then you are endorsing actually. "The next speaker is smart awesome guy who has extensive experience in leading a crypto fund".

> if they could secure an interview with Adolf Hitler himself,

His speeches are no secret. If you invite Hitler, introduce him nicely and he then go about Jewish danger, they you are in fact helping him promote genocide. And that guy would not go for interview where he be in any danger of not dominating tone (he was good at popular politics).

But seriously, why is it that nazi speech is always the most important one? I dont see anyone going "interview with Usama Bin Ladin, lets have Pol Pot speaking, lets have Stalin speaking, we should add communists/anarchists/ISIS into the mix".

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